Chapter 8

8

Corbet

Ihave never spoken of the past. Not to anyone.

The words have been on the tip of my tongue in battle, as a man’s deepest regrets and secrets often are when death is so close, but I’ve never said them aloud.

There was never Gwen to say them to.

I thought it would be impossibly difficult to reveal these traumas from my youth, but when I’m looking at this woman, at Gwen, it’s suddenly the easiest thing in the world—and isn’t that a wonder? To look at someone and know she can be trusted with the absolute worst. That she’ll know how to receive the words and interpret them in the way I’d hope. And I have to believe they will make a difference, because what in the hell will I do without her?

I’m not just in love with her. I’m fucking besotted.

I’m beside myself with joy one minute and in despair the next. She’s taken hold of my heart and mind and soul and shown me that life was a barren thing before she arrived. Now I have to do everything in my power to keep her, or I’ll break. I’ll fucking break.

“When I was a child,” I begin, swallowing. “My father was a warrior, like me. But he would…behave far differently than I do. Most of the time, he wouldn’t even partake in the battles, he would carouse with women and go on drunken binges for days on end, waiting for someone to collect him and return him to the castle. And my mother, she found out about this and used me as a weapon against him.” I pause, for once allowing the memories to flood in, rather than blocking them out. Memories of cold confusion and despair. “My father might have been a fool, but he loved me. My mother used his pride in me to punish him. While he was away, she’d force me to sleep outside in the dead of winter. Or put me in a pit with the wolfhounds and challenge me to escape…”

Frigid air blows into my chest, making me pause.

Gwen’s expression hasn’t changed, but horror is frozen in her eyes.

She doesn’t say anything, but she reaches down and threads our fingers together, raising the temperature inside me back to normal and it turns out to be exactly what I need to continue. “My father had to find a way to get revenge and…I guess at some point it eclipsed the affection he had for me and I became a tool for him to use, as well. Against her. He would bring me into battle and put me in the thick of it. Right on the front lines, before I was even twelve years old. I suppose he wanted to show my mother there was nothing she could do to hurt him. He was beating her at her own game. And that’s all it was to them. A game…and I was the game piece to move at will.”

Without a word, Gwen slides closer to me and tucks her head into the curve of my neck. I pull her as close as possible and…it feels as though I’m truly exhaling for the first time in my life. The hard-packed pressure in my sternum is dissipating and there is only her. The warm support of her body, her hand in mine, breath on my throat. This is how I want to remain. How I want to live. Exactly like this. With her and for her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, tightening her grip around my fingers. “They allowed hate to rule them. It speaks to your strength of character that it doesn’t rule you now.”

I grunt, letting my palm stroke down the back of her hair. “Well. You didn’t see me on the battlefield. I was hateful then.”

“You left the Fury on those fields, where he belongs. You didn’t bring him with you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you bought sweets for my sisters.”

A rumble passes through me. “It was nothing.”

“And when I scorned you in front of others, you merely laughed. You have a good mixture of arrogance and humility, Corbet. For all the terrible treatment you suffered, you came through it a good man. Be at peace with yourself.” She sighs against my throat, stirring my chest hair. “The only experience you have with marriage is seeing two people pitted against each other, twisting their commitment into something ugly. I don’t fault you for not wanting to marry.”

I wait for the deluge of relief to hit—she understands—but it never comes. It sits at the top of my jugular, stuck, making it hard for me to swallow. Wasn’t my ultimate goal to reveal my past to Gwen so she would see things from my perspective?

Yes.

But now that she does, now that she is a step closer to being my permanent lover, a worry starts to niggle at the back of my neck. An undefined one. I don’t feel settled whatsoever.

“Gwen…”

“You will be ready to take a chance on love someday,” she says, her hand trailing down my chest, my stomach, the gentle pads of her fingertips teasing my cock back to life. “You’ll judge a person based on their actions and you won’t see them through the lens of your past. I promise.”

“Gwen—”

Her mouth locks with mine, halting my words with a kiss.

Why does my heart feel as though it’s going to explode?

Why is she speaking as though anyone else will ever exist for me?

There is only her—and I try to show her that with my mouth. I taste every inch of her, winding our tongues together and giving her the breath from my lungs, groaning when she wraps her fist around my dick and strokes it into steel. There is something happening between us, but I’m not sure what. There were barriers the last time we gave each other pleasure, erected by us both, but they’re gone now, and the air is thick with desperation.

Mine. Hers.

My touch roams over her back to knead her tasty backside, rifling back up into her hair, my hips rolling toward the smooth circle of her hand. There is no way to get enough of her. She is a sweet addiction and I’m succumbing to it. Yes, the conversation between us was left unfinished, at least on my end, but I have time to figure out why I’m unsettled. Don’t I? Why should I be anxious? She told me she understands why I don’t want to marry. That’s as good as an agreement to be my mistress. And in time, she’ll realize there will never, ever be another woman in my life. The very idea is abhorrent to me and I’ll prove it to her, again and again.

We break the kiss to suck air into our lungs, Gwen’s gorgeously flushed face making my heart slam into my ribs. There’s a conflict waging in her eyes, though. Indecision. I don’t like it. I don’t want her to feel anything but happiness from now until forever.

“What is it, my love?”

I don’t know where the endearment comes from, but nothing has ever felt more right or natural. It seems to push Gwen toward whatever decision she’s struggling with. Her mouth finds mine and she kisses me with twice the abandon, her perfect, curvy body rolling me onto my back and straddling me without breaking the kiss. I swear to God, I almost die from the pleasure of having her on top of me, her pussy hot and wet on my shaft, rubbing herself up and back against it, turning me inside out with need.

Every writhe of her sweet flesh tightens my balls, every duel of our tongues makes me a grateful man, for she is love and acceptance and temptation all in one. An embarrassment of riches for a man who thought his heart was permanently hardened.

“Is this how you will make me come this time, woman?” I grip her juicy ass cheeks and work her roughly on my cock, my neck muscles straining with the building lust in my loins. “Will you rub this little virgin cunt on me until I spend all over my stomach?”

“No,” she whispers against my lips, her eyes golden brown in the lantern light. “You will spend inside of me this time, Your Majesty.” She nips at my mouth. “Won’t you like that?”

God help me, I almost empty my sack there and then.

This is it. This is proof she has accepted my proposition.

Thank God.

Right?

I ignore the sense of foreboding in the back of my head and let the needs of my body outweigh everything else. “Jesus Christ, Gwen. Yes.” I mold her backside in my hands, chest heaving violently. “Wrap that slippery pussy around the king.”

Eyes heavy lidded, this goddess of mine reaches back and guides my swollen dick between her thighs. She bites her lip and presses me against that unclaimed hole, rubbing the head of my shaft side to side until her flesh blossoms open, allowing me entry.

The intensity of our stare increases, neither one of us able to look away as she impales herself, inch by inch, her lips parting on a whimpering pant when I’m halfway there.

An upthrust of my hips seats me fully, eliciting a scream-sob from Gwen and a lustful snarl from me—and I have to bear down on my lower body to keep from ejaculating. Lord, she is fucking paradise. Soft and narrow and drenched. She’s is untried, her incredible tightness only reminds me of that fact, but there is no going slow. No. Not for me, not for Gwen. She is already leaning forward and balancing herself on my shoulders, her hips working several different angles, looking for comfort, her eyes flashing with pleasure.

“No timid maidens for the king,” she breathes, her mouth dancing over mine. “A warrior’s body such as yours demands a rough servicing, does it not?”

“Yes,” I groan, my attention riveted by her beauty, her sensuality that is taking even deeper root now, as if she could get any more perfect for me. I’m not going to last a minute if she keeps talking like this, her cunt milking me rhythmically. “Give it to me.”

Her hips snap back and grind down, both of us moaning at the friction.

“Like that, your majesty?”

My back bows off the bed, desire twisting in my stomach. “Fuck. Yes.”

She rubs her tits side to side in my chest hair, letting me feel her exquisite nipples against the flat circles of mine. “Is this what you need after a hard day?” Gwen purrs, taking me at a faster pace now. Riding me. Enveloping my dick with her slick womanhood, releasing me halfway, then gripping every inch of me greedily on the way back down. Doing it over and over until I’m holding her hips in a bruising grip, calling her name hoarsely, devouring her mouth when she brings it close enough, cursing vilely when she brings her lips flush with mine, hips rolling furiously, and says, “Do you like my tight, wet sex, Your Majesty?”

“Enough, woman,” I roar, flipping Gwen onto her back, wrapping a hand around her throat and thrusting the way a man does when his orgasm won’t wait. When it’s burning like an out of control pyre at the base of his spine, his balls weighted down with pressure, cock so sensitive that only one more stroke, one more stroke will do him. “Do I like your tight, wet cunt, my love? No. I fucking worship it.” I ram myself deep and hold, circling my hips crudely. “This tight little gash between your legs alone will be responsible for my peaceful kingdom. What need do I have of battle when the greatest reward is already in my bed?”

I slide an arm beneath Gwen’s lower back and fuck her ruthlessly. There’s no help for me. I’m lost in her and she invites it with encouraging gasps of my name, with eager pulls of my hips, cries of pleasure. She watches me turn into an animal with breathless excitement and it drives me higher, faster, my willpower vanishing when she reaches down and plays with her sexy, little clit, her mewling sounds reaching my ears and finishing me.

Our gasps mingle and we begin to tremble at the same time, the tremors increasing in intensity with every passing second, her pussy clamping down on my erupting shaft, our flesh smacking in the dimness of the tent, moisture flooding the place where our sexes lock us together. Bliss is like liquid metal blasting through my veins, rendering me a servant to the pulsations between my thighs, the spurting end of my misery. The fact that I’m releasing into this woman, possibly even getting her pregnant with my child, is a gift I never knew enough to expect. And so is wrapping her in my arms and watching her drift into exhausted sleep moments later, a deep sense of belonging pulling me after her in the darkness.